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by Ithilwen K-Bane
Summary: Felix and Locus had always been competitive, but when your job title changes to "professional manipulator," what do you compete for and how do you prove who really won? Rated M for language and allusions to violent and sexual situations. Rated D for dark. Contains spoilers for RvB12. Contains no spoilers for RvB13.


_Red vs Blue_ and its characters are the creation of the crew at Rooster Teeth. It is itself inspired by _Halo_, owned by Bungie and Microsoft.

Spoilers through RvB12-10. Inspired by but contains no spoilers for RvB13-1.

This was inspired by a conversation with nottragedi.

Rated for language, allusions to sexual situations and general dark. _The opinions of and assumptions made by the characters are not always those of the author._

"Wash?"  
"Tucker?"  
—RvB12-8, "Thin Ice"

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Felix leaned back against the rock, imagining he could feel the heat through his armor. The roof of the cavern had fallen in years ago. From up on the ledge, he could see the light arc down through the heavy air and view all of dear Vanessa's scrap of an army laid out and still moving like wriggling grubs. He could just make out the four celebrities he'd hauled out of the canyon. _Captain_. Felix had had a captain once, during the Great War. Always telling people to be more careful. Word was he'd made an interesting noise when he'd found himself with zero remaining ammo and cornered by twenty brutes. A real cautionary tale.

The orange one was talking to two of the locals and pointing toward the mess hall. Felix could hear voices but couldn't make out the words. The maroon one was gesticulating hysterically at the dark blue one, who'd somehow driven a jeep straight into two rocks at once. And Tucker...

Felix tipped his head to the side, activating his long-range comm.

"So which one did you pick?" he asked.

"Get off this channel," growled Locus.

"Hey glad you shared your concerns but don't worry about it; we're encrypted, right? These morons don't have the equipment to break anyone's codes." Felix rolled his shoulders and flicked out his knife, balancing the blade on one armored finger. "Plus I flipped that switch where people outside my armor just hear buzzing. There's no one up here anyway. We're fine."

"Get off this channel."

"Usual stakes?" he asked.

"I never agreed to your foolish bet."

Felix cracked a smile underneath his helmet. "You never do." Locus never _agreed_ but he always _played_. "You're just jealous because I always win."

"You do not always win."

Yes, who knew that Vanessa would turn out to be a prude? And there had also been a tie that one time just after the Sangheli schism. What had it been? The pair of ODSTs? Or had that been the Spartan-III and its commander? Anyway, so technically Felix had lost _twice_. Even when Locus lost, he didn't always pay up.

"Which one do _you_ want?" asked Locus.

Down in the cavern floor, a small spot of blue-white light was flaring. Swish-swish-stab and a boulder sheared in half.

"So you're in?" answered Felix. "By the way, how's your new boyfriend? Should I be jealous?"

"General Doyle has not returned from the capital, so I have kept Agent Washington and the others in lockdown. If it were up to me, I would break them before putting them to use."

"Hey, he was in prison before. He might already know the drill. Speaking of which, you fucked him yet?"

There was a thick silence on the line, like a warm night with no stars, alive with things that would bite.

"I have told you that my interest in Agent Washington is in learning how a soldier of his caliber could fall so low."

"Yeah, _and_ I've seen that ass." Felix spun the knife in his hand, feeling the point catch between the grooves on his glove. "Remember what I said about the Mantis droid."

"It was especially inane. I remember."

"It'll work," said Felix. "But if you can get him to admit that his little friend's pet is a pile of junk and chuck it in the compactor—"

"That would be counter to our mission objectives."

"Oh _whatever_," he leaned back, stretching against the rocks like a sofa. "But we both know you pick the Freelancer."

A loud silence.

Felix jumped to his feet, pacing the ledge. "Does he talk about Tucker? The blue with the mouth on him?" Felix lip curled. Tucker played it dumb but break a man down and they all thought they were so smart. Felix spun the knife on his finger again. Even the careful ones.

Another flash below. Another boulder gone.

_Captain_. Even a captain could end up with no ammo and an empty KA-bar sheath.

"After you," said Locus.

"I can get him to give me the ambassador sword," said Felix.

"Too easy," growled Locus.

"I'll fuck his brains out. Then I'll get him to suck my dick like a fratboy at rush week."

A slow smile colored Locus's voice. "Too. Easy."

"Hmm," he said, spinning on one heel. "How much you bet I can get him to kill Vanessa?"

"That is contrary to our mission objectives. You will eliminate the commander when ordered and not before. She has proven tractable. Her replacement could be less easily manipulated."

"No _way_," Felix held the knife by the hilt and tossed it toward the cliff wall. It sliced through the sunlight and then the moss and hit its mark, sticking in a crack between two rocks. "These people are _idiots_."

"Get him to give me one of his men," offered Locus as Felix walked across the ledge and braced his arm against the rock.

"Ha! Now who's conflating mission objectives? It's my _job_ to serve you his men. Oh, expect a meal in a week or two," Felix yanked the knife loose, clumps of earth falling to his feet. "Vanessa's sending us to that research base, Outpost 22. Make sure it's packed."

"Done."

Down on the cave floor, Tucker and some recruits with green-accented armor were pulling the jeep free.

"Maybe..." Felix twirled the knife by the hilt. "There's one douche on his squad that thinks Tucker's Jesus Christ meets Master Chief with James Bond's dick. I can get Tucker to check him off our quota for us."

He could hear the grin in Locus's throat. "Deal."

"And when he's all conflicted about how he screwed up and in need of gruff word of reassurance, man to man..." Felix traced a curve in the air.

"I already agreed to your conditions."

Tucker. When people felt sorry for themselves—or better yet, when they felt sorry for _you_—then you could get them to do _anything_. It was like a panel unlocked on the side of everyone's head, and they'd just let you reach in and work the controls. Do anything and believe anything. Tucker'd wake up thinking Felix had tossed him a mercy lay.

"What about you?" asked Felix. "How're you going to keep busy while I kick your ass and take your money?"

"I will restore Agent Washington to the state of a true soldier. I will strip him of his sentimentality."

"Yeah yeah, you want to lay your eggs in his brain and make him your spawn," goaded Felix. "So what am I gonna do? Check his sentimentality meter? You gotta _prove_ you did it, pal. _My_ job leaves a body of evidence." He peered down the side of the cliff. One of the greens was hopping on one foot next to a suspiciously placed jeep tire, and Tucker was yelling at another one. The douche. "Literally," he finished.

"I will send you Agent Washington's kill count," said Locus. "When you see it increase, when he dispatches Commander Kimball's men without mercy, you will concede that I have won."

"Yeah well _mercy's_ a little hard to judge unless you're—"

Felix's boots stopped before he found his footing. His armor had seized up; the fibers weren't molding to him fast enough, ringing in his chest with each breath.

The scene below was breaking up now that the jeep was free. Green team and its captain were headed toward drill area four. The one with the obstacle course.

"Tucker," he said, the word all air and consonants.

Locus was silent.

"Get him to do Tucker."

"What?"

Like a slow-motion vid speeding up again, Felix's feet moved against the gravelly rocks, knife flickering as he switched it from hand to hand. "Bullets or plasma, dealer's choice," he said, "but it has to be close range or no deal." His mouth was too wet. He swallowed. "He has to know it was him. He has to know he meant it. You get the Freelancer to shoot Tucker and you win." Locus loved those words, Felix knew. He especially liked it when Felix said them.

"Our orders are to prevent the reds and blues from reuniting with—"

Felix waved his arm over his head, knife whistling in the stale air, voice twisting into a cable. "I don't know, Mr. Sheep-to-a-pen, how about you _herd_ him? They'll be on the same battlefield eventually. Just set it up that they have to fight each other. Or, or, or!" he half knelt, knees bending as if he were whispering to the gravel. "Vanessa's offered them a rescue mission. On the off-chance that they actually _get_ that far, just make sure the Freelancer has a loaded rifle handy and thinks the base and all his new buddies are under attack. He puts a round in Tucker and _you win_."

The thought of Tucker nursing _that_ particular betrayal turned the back of Felix's mind spotty, like closing your eyes against too much sunlight or when you got them to give you too much of the really good painkillers. But... Felix's stomach dropped. _Oh_. He caught the knife by the hilt but didn't remember throwing it. Oh even _better_.

"Locus," Felix had to breathe in between. "_Double if he kills him_."

The radio crackled.

"Locus..." Felix pulled on the word like he was dragging a man off a ship. He had to answer. It didn't _count_ if he didn't answer.

Locus said, "I don't want money."

Felix had lost before. Twice. The second time, with Vanessa, it had been enough credits to retrofit a dwarf Pelican. It wasn't real unless you lost something that mattered. The first time...

Worth it. Worth it worth it worth it.

"Pick the time and place," said Felix, "but I don't want money either."

The signal buzzed. "What do you want?"

"When I win you have to share."

"I told you, Agent Washington—"

"_Share_. Or ask for something else."

There was a long pause. "Agreed. Locus out."

Felix's armor felt cold, like there was a layer of sweat that hadn't wicked out yet. He flipped the knife over in his hands and headed down the ledge path. Time to go see _Captain_ Tucker and brainstorm a few ideas. Probably time to learn the names of the idiots on green team too.

Felix had shared a captain during the Great War. Thought he was so smart. He'd had a reputation as a careful man, always obsessing about protocol, always ready with a backup plan. The rest of the squad had been pretty rattled by the circumstances of his death: the irony that he'd do something so stupid as to miscalculate how much ammunition he had left, and by _that_ much. Even a careful man could not only die but die because he got sloppy. It was what this war did to people. It was human nature. The captain had gone down into legend as a cautionary tale, just another moron whose luck had run out and found himself with no ammunition and an empty KA-bar sheath.

Felix slid his knife home, out of sight. He didn't usually get attached to things with a resale value under ten thousand, but it was, in its way, a victory. He'd gotten Locus to hand it over. Said he needed proof, a body of evidence, and twenty brutes herded like sheep just didn't count.

Felix had bet him that he couldn't do it.

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I was originally conflicted about the title and temporarily renamed this "Body of Evidence." I was all, "I can't give the story _that_ title. It's too suggestive! What if people don't read it because they think it's smut? What if people _want_ smut and are disappointed? What if someone I know IRL sees it and thinks I'm one of _those_ fanwriters?" but then I realized that all those reasons suck.

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drf24 at columbia dot edu


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